People, Prayer & Climate Change

Mythical Corn Ceremony
Ignacio Moquino (Zia Pueblo) 1938

After exploring the Anasazi I am left thinking about the relationship of human beings to the Earth and to climate change. Certainly the weather affects us. And, we know that today we humans are affecting the climate, not in a good way, by our carbon footprints. But, can we also affect climate with prayer, and through art?

A while ago I was reading about the Puritans. They took personal responsibility for storms at sea and harsh winters by blaming the weather on even their most private sinful thoughts. This seemed like neurotic self-absorption to me. Would they have been relieved to understand that everything was not about them? Or, did blaming the weather on their own sins give them some feeling of control over the dramatic circumstances they encountered?

Did the Anasazi priests lose credibility when their climate rituals failed to produce rain or did the rain actually abandon them because of something they did? Were they out of harmony? Had they possibly altered their landscape to the extent that it did in fact cause persistent drought? One way or another the great houses of the Anasazi lost the critical mass needed to hold together as the center of society for the San Juan Basin and its people. The people dispersed and survived by living simpler lives. Is there a lesson here for us?

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

Hopi Katsina Ewoto
Chief of Katsinas Controls the Seasons

Rainmakers From the Gods - Hopi Katsinam

The Hopi word Koyaanisqatsi means, “crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.”

It seems likely this is what happened to the Anasazi. After a millennium in the social, political and spiritual center of the entire San Juan Basin the great houses of Chaco Canyon were abandoned. No one knows what really happened but consider what we do know.

First, sophisticated architectural plans that took generations to construct in consistent precision alignment to the cardinal directions and seasonal rotations of the sun would have required both a high level of oversight and a large labor force. The great houses served as ceremonial centers to the entire region making it likely that a priestly class oversaw building construction, food production and seasonal rituals.

Then, a high arid desert culture dependent on agriculture was also dependent on rainfall and mountain snow. If the seasonal rituals were performed to induce rain for a century they worked. Then, around 1100 AD. A period of drought set in. Within fifty years the whole system collapsed, the great houses were abandoned and the people dispersed.

Undoubtedly drought would have caused the people to be discouraged and hungry. Did some form of human activity effect climate change? When the rituals performed to induce rain failed did the priests lose credibility and power? Did a state of Koyaanisqatsi cause the people to seek simpler lifestyles of greater harmony? It would seem so to me.

Earthenware Seed Jar, Anasazi Culture, 1100-1300 CE.

The Anasazi of Chaco Canyon

Anasazi Cliff Dwelling - Photo: Peter Kunasz

For about a thousand years and before Europeans ever set foot in North America the people who were the hunter gatherers of the American Southwest built an elaborate and sophisticated centralized society in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Actively trading with their neighbors to the south, the Toltec and Myan, they started growing corn, beans and squash. As they shifted to agriculture they were able to settle and they built elaborate structures out of clay masonry. These buildings are precisely aligned to the four directions, aligned to the sun in ways that mark the solstices and equinoxes. We call these people the Anasazi. In Hopi Anasazi means “ancestors”, in Navajo, “ancient enemy”.

Kiva - Explore the Ancient Southwest

Underground rooms entered from above through a hole at the top are called kivas. The kivas were lined with benches and appear to have been used for ceremonial purposes. Flutes, body paint, crystals, turquoise, stone pipes and effigies are among the items found in kivas. The great kiva at Casa Rinconada could accommodate hundreds of people and it is believed that people traveled from the surrounding areas to visit the great kivas at certain times for ceremonies that marked the changing seasons.

Anasazi Frog Fetish - Turquoise and Jet
Pre-Columbian Jade

According to Dr. Shelley Valdez, a member of the Pueblo Laguna Tribe, the cardinal directions, "connect people, the seasons, the Sun and Moon's patterns, time, nature, the environment, the cosmos, and ceremonial systems. Observance of the cardinal directions and the Sun essentially ensured life by knowing when it was time to plant, harvest, and hunt for example."

Interactive exhibit - Chaco Culture National Historical Park
Link to: Traditions of the Sun